“India is buying oil and gas from Russia violating the sanctions, India is propping up Russia by replacing the EU purchases”
They have been buying oil that used to go to Europe by tanker ship, but the natural gas from European pipelines can’t physically get to other markets.
They are not violating sanctions at this point. Existing sanctions don’t yet cover third parties - just those countries that chose to cut off/cut back Russian imports. The existing legal sanctions set limits/deadlines for participating countries to stop importing Russian oil, gas and coal, by certain dates. The USA has stopped. The EU stopped coal on 12 August, they will stop accepting any more oil tankers (90% of their pre-war imports) at year’s end, and cut back natural gas 2/3rds by then.
We have been preparing secondary sanctions on other Russian oil customers, to possibly come out in December - waiting until Europe could replace Russian oil first (so as to not drive prices too high).
It is a slow moving process to replace those great quantities - millions of barrels per day. By historical norms, it is happening very quickly, and billions of euros have been invested to build the needed new infrastructure, to develop new production elsewhere, and to sign new long term supply contracts with non-Russian producers. It is a phaseout for Europe first, then secondary sanctions are planned for other customers.
I have read elsewhere Russia is selling oil to India and China at bargain basement prices. Then India is reselling to EU countries at a profit. In that case these transactions would be hurting Russia and helping India, and although costing EU countries more, also helping them build reserves while costing Russia. Perhaps India could be persuaded to reduce costs to EU while still making money doing this.
Russia is saying their 2nd Quarter economic value dropped 4%, and third Q is expected to drop about 7%. So sanctions are beginning to be felt. If the following 2 quarters also drop by 7%, That could become 25% for one year. Even if less it is still not a promising outlook. If they still have shortages of computer chips and quality ball bearings, then reduced production will continue to damage the GDP. Lower production and unemployment will continue to hurt workers and landlords, and taxe revenue. See link below.
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-growth-annual
It will be interesting to see what happens to oil prices this next year. In US, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is currently trading just under $90 a barrel. If this holds, then some of the pricier fracking wells may be put back into pumping, , and new drilling. So far US producers have been waiting to see how the market shakes out as they raise prices and enjoy elevated profits. If there develops a trend downward in world prices this would not be good for Russia.